Transcript TUDOR THEATRE - Miss Whitfield's English Class

William Shakespeare
Born 1564 in Stratford upon
Avon, England…April 23rd
Shakespeare…the facts
 Parents were
John—glovemaker,
local politician and
Mary—daughter of
wealthy landowner
 Shakespeare had
7 brothers and
sisters
Shakespeare’s house
Shakespeare…the
facts
 Spelling not yet standardized, thus
name spelled in different ways
• Shakespeare, Shakspere, Shackspere,
Shaxper, Shagspere, Shaxberd, etc.
King’s New School – Shakespeare’s school
From: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/danielle.esposito/
Married Life
• Married in November, 1582, to Anne
Hathaway
• Anne was pregnant at the time
• First daughter Susanna born in May, 1583
• Twins (Hamnet and Judith) christened on
February 2, 1585
• No documentary evidence between 15851592
• Sometime in this period, he moved to
London and began working in the theatre.
Anne Hathaway’s Cottage
From: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/danielle.esposito/
Introduction
 Throughout the middle ages plays were performed by workers
in towns and were religious based, often retelling stories from
the Bible.
Elizabethan writers introduced theatre audiences to horror, the
supernatural and GORE…
Theater Career
• Member and later
part-owner of the
Lord
Chamberlain’s
Men
• Theaters in
London closed
from 1593-1594
due to the plague
Theater Career
• After the accession of James
I in 1603, the company was
granted permission to change
its name to the King’s Men
London theatres: Blackfriars,
Rose, Swan, Curtain, Globe
• Wrote during the reigns of
Queen Elizabeth (Elizabethan
period) and King James I
(Jacobean period)
Queen Elizabeth
The Globe Theatre
•Globe built in 1599 by the Lord Chamberlain’s
Men, with Shakespeare as a primary investor
•Burned down in 1613 during a production of
Shakespeare’s Henry VIII when a cannon
misfired and a spark landed on the thatched
roof
The Rebuilt Globe Theater, London
The Globe Theater
The Plays
 Shakespeare wrote…
 14 COMEDIES – ends in marriage
 Midsummer Night’s Dream, Merchant of Venice,
Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Much Ado about
Nothing…
 10 HISTORIES – Richard III, Richard II, Henry
IV…
 10 TRAGEDIES – ends in death
 Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Othello…
 4 romances (think: serious comedies) – Pericles,
Cymbeline, Winter’s Tale, Tempest
The Poetry
• Two major poems
• Venus and Adonis
• Rape of Lucrece
• 154 Sonnets
• Numerous other poems
• Poetry usually dedicated to a patron
How to Read the Plays
• Do not pause at the end of a line unless the
punctuation calls for it
• Read it like prose
• Many of these plays have numerous
references to people, places, events, myths,
etc., that you might not be familiar with.
That’s what the notes are for—use them.
• Keep a dictionary handy
Shakespeare’s Language
•Shakespeare wrote in “Early Modern English”
•EME was not very different from “Modern
English,” except that it had some old holdovers.
•Beginning about 200 years before Shakespeare,
and largely complete by his day, long vowel
pronunciation shifted: ex: good, name, life
Shakespeare’s Language
•Shakespeare coined many words we still use
today:
•Critical
•Majestic
•Dwindle
And quite a few phrases as well:
•One fell swoop
•Flesh and blood
•Vanish into thin air
See http://www.wordorigins.org/histeng.htm
Shakespeare in Language
Elizabethan theatre has had a very important effect on today’s theatre,
and other parts of every day life. For example:
 Shakespeare coined over 1600 words still used today including
countless, critical, excellent, lonely, majestic, obscene and its.
 Names coined by Shakespeare:
-
Imogen in the play Cymbaline,
-
Jessica in the play The Merchant of Venice
-
Miranda in the play The Tempest
-
Olivia in the play Twelfth Night
-
Cordelia in the play King Lear
Shakespeare Today
 Elizabethan theatre still plays a part in our day to day lives, mostly
through the influence of Shakespeare. You can find references to his
work in films, novels, plays, musicals, songs, poetry, artwork,
satire…Even today his characters and storylines continue to inspire…
And lastly…
“If you cannot understand my argument, and declare "It's
Greek to me", if your lost property has vanished into thin air,
if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from
green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you
have been tongue-tied, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you
have knitted your brows, insisted on fair play, slept not one
wink, laughed yourself into stitches, if you have too much of
a good thing, if you have seen better days or if you think it is
high time and that that is the long and short of it, if you
believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it
involves your own flesh and blood, if you lie low till the crack
of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your
teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason
- it is all one to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare!”
Traditional Views of Othello
Othello is seen as a
A “man of high standard who falls from
that high because of a flaw that has
affected many” - Aristotle
Important Dramatic Terms
 Tragic flaw—a defect in the protagonist
that brings about his or her downfall.
 Hubris: derived from the Greek word
hybris, means “excessive pride.” In
Greek tragedy, hubris is often viewed as
the flaw that leads to the downfall of the
tragic hero.
Setting
Setting (time) · Late sixteenth
century, during the wars between
Venice and Turkey
Setting (place) · Venice in Act I;
the island of Cyprus thereafter
http://geography.about.com/library/cia/blcitaly.htm
Cyprus is located east of Italy, in the
Mediterranean Sea. It is just south of Turkey.
http://geography.about.com/library/cia/nccyprus.htm
Types of People in Othello
 Venetians
 Most are noblemen and women
(Brabantio, Desdemona, Roderigo)
 Also, there are the nobles’ servants
(Emilia)
 Some are soldiers (Cassio, Iago)
 Others are part of Venetian government
(the Duke)
Types of People (cont’d)
 Moors (Othello)
 Black nomadic people of the
northern shores of Africa, originally
the inhabitants of Mauretania
 Converted to Islam in the 8th
century
Moors (cont’d)
 Othello is a Moor
 Discriminated against because of his
race (black)
 Othello has been accepted in some
ways because he is a Christian and a
military genius
 Yet his marriage to Desdemona reflects
the prevailing view toward interracial
marriage.
Evil Women!
In the Elizabethan times
there was a long and well
established tradition in
the Church of what we
would now call misogyny
– women were distrusted
simply because they were
women. At the time it
was assumed that
women would cheat – it
was part of their nature!
The men in “Othello”
have differing views of
women – from Othello
who idolizes his wife
(Desdemona) to Iago
who sees love as "merely
a lust of the blood and a
permission of the will“.
The attitudes of the
audience at the time are
likely to have been varied
too.
Task
 On the following slide are some lines spoken by, or
about, various characters in the play – consider what
you think each quotation reveals about the person
speaking/being spoken about and what they are like as
a character.
1) Iago - describing Othello: “loving his own pride
and purposes”
2) Iago - speaking about his relationship with
Othello: “I follow him to serve my turn upon him”
3) Iago - speaking about himself: “I am not what I
am”.
4) Othello - speaking about himself: “My parts, my
title and my perfect soul shall manifest me rightly”
5) Othello - about Iago: “A man he is of honesty and
trust”.